Abstract

In rehabilitation professions, such as physical therapy, the primary objective is to recover motor function and movement coordination. Additional benefits may include learning new motion strategies and prevention of secondary complications, such as muscle atrophy, osteoporosis and spasticity. Increasingly, more patients do their prescribed clinical exercise at home due to convenience and decrease in expense. More than half of all patients do not consistently follow recommended rehabilitation regimens due to lack of self direction and feedback. Attempts have been made to reduce the proportion of non-compliers, but with little apparent success. To correct this situation, feedback must be provided to the patient in a more consistent, timely, less costly and convenient manner. Providing instructions and feedback that direct the patient???s attention toward maintaining a certain trajectory, velocity and timing of end points of their motor movements is reported to be beneficial in enhancing compliance. These parameters should be copied as closely as possible. Thus, real time feedback is crucial to the patient to ensure they are performing the movement in the best and most consistent manner in order to optimize their rehabilitation. Real time sonification of motion data may be an innovative feedback method so that patients may accurately perform their prescribed rehabilitation. To determine if the real time sonification of motion data is a viable option for use in the in-home rehabilitation setting, a program, Kinect Muse (KM), has been developed. KM is a combination of software and hardware that provides the patient or subject with real time sensory (auditory/visual) feedback as they move. Overall, KM utilizes the Kinect (Microsoft Corporation), collects and analyzes X and Y coordinates from joints. Subsequently, these coordinates trigger MIDI notes and volumes which are then played back for the patient in real time. Advisors/Committee Members: May-Newman, Karen, Kassegne, Samuel, Pozos, Robert.